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3D Brigade Delivered Cutting Edge In-Game Cut Scenes for Dark Sector

3D Brigade, Eastern-Europe's leading art outsourcing studio for the videogame sector announced today that some of its latest work can be seen in Dark Sector, an atmospheric action thriller designed exclusively for PlayStation 3 and Xbox360. Developed by Digital Extremes and published by D3Publisher, Dark Sector is one of the key action titles of the year.

Digital Extremes supplied the scripts, the rough storyboards, the environments, and the characters to 3D Brigade, whose task was to create top-notch quality, engine ready, in-game cut scene movies which included camera placements/movements, movie direction, and character/facial animations (80% of these were made using motion capture technology and the remaining are key-frame animations.) The end results were nine amazing, engine-ready scenes, amounting to a total of 15 minutes.

These incredible cut scenes were made by a team of 9 animators and led by Balazs Kalazdi, 3D Brigade's industry veteran Animation Director. Using Softimage XSI for the work and 3D Brigade's own optical motion capture studio to record the motion data, the Budapest-based art outsourcer worked closely with London, Ontario, Canada-based Digital Extremes for 5 months. The company was able to conform to Dark Sector's unique vision and help smooth the sequences integration into the game's proprietary next-gen technology, Digital Extremes' Evolution Engine.

One of the major cinematic tasks was to give personality to the characters. The third cut scene by 3D Brigade, where the game's hero, Hayden Tenno, kills an important character was so successful in this, that the style and characterization of this movie became a quality benchmark for all the other cut scenes. This movie demonstrated that 3D Brigade was able to grasp the client's creative vision and match their AAA quality requirements.

"The 3D Brigade team was fantastic to work with. They understood our vision and requirement for top quality work and they delivered," said Sheldon Carter, producer at Digital Extremes. "They went above and beyond to make sure we were happy with the end product and you can see the end result in the slick high-production look of Dark Sector."

"The task to create world-class, AAA cut scenes for one of the key titles of 2008 gave us incredible experience in the field of real time movies," said John Z. Vamosi, chairman of 3D Brigade. "For the most part, Digital Extremes gave us complete freedom regarding our work because they were very pleased with the results. Frankly, it's hard to imagine a more mutually satisfying cooperation."

A dark, gritty experience packed with fast action, incredible superpowers, and an engaging story, Dark Sector represents the next evolution of interactive action. Dark Sector thrusts players into the role of Hayden Tenno, a covert operative sent on a dangerous mission into Lasria, an Eastern European city on the brink of ruin that hides a deadly Cold War secret. In the midst of this mission, Hayden is attacked by an unknown enemy and infected by the Technocyte Virus, a brutal bio-weapon that twists its victims into mindless killing machines. Surviving this attack, Hayden finds that the Technocyte virus has granted him powerful inhuman abilities, unlike anything he has ever seen. Now, he must evolve along with his powers, survive, and become a hero. The 7 cut scenes, all integrated into and played back from within Digital Extremes' powerful Evolution Engine, tell this story with stark clarity and high-octane action.

About Digital Extremes

Founded in 1993 by industry visionary, James Schmalz, Digital Extremes ranks as one of the world's top independent development studios in the interactive entertainment industry. The Canadian based developer is best known for its co-creation of Epic Games' Unreal, the multi-million unit selling franchise which includes the award-winning PC series Unreal and Unreal Tournament as well as Xbox hit Unreal Championship. Digital Extremes recently shipped the highly acclaimed next-generation 3rd person action title, Dark Sector using its proprietary next-gen technology, the Evolution Engine. For more information, visit the company website at www.digitalextremes.com.

About 3D Brigade

Established in 2002 and located in Budapest, Hungary (EU), 3D Brigade is Eastern-Europe's leading 3D art outsourcing studio. The company is an official vendor of Electronic Arts, Disney Interactive Studios, Vivendi Universal Games, Eidos, Atari, Liquid Entertainment, Digital Extremes, Konami, and many more. 3D Brigade offers a competitively priced solution to deliver any kind of art content for digital entertainment products from concept art to 3D modeling and texturing to render movies.

The company's more than 90 highly skilled, full-time artists contributed to over 60 different game titles. Some of the key projects from our past include Silent Hill: Origins for Konami, Dark Sector for Digital Extremes, Heroes of Might and Magic V for Ubisoft, The Witcher for CD Projekt RED, Sacred 2 Fallen Angel for Ascaron, F.E.A.R. - Extraction Point for Timegate Studios, and Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge for Atari/Spellbound.